


We Will All Go Together When We Go

by Rexila



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: End of Act Five, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rexila/pseuds/Rexila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sleuth and Dame take a break from a party to discuss the end of the world and futility.<br/>(based on End of Act Five and a certain song)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Will All Go Together When We Go

**Author's Note:**

> I saw everyone else writing End of Act Five 'Watching the Universe End' stuff and tried my own take on it, with my special touch of course (my special touch is stupidity)  
> also including this under Homestuck since it's based on the end of act five. Also inspired by [this touching and beautiful song.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs)

_Play an appropriate song and pose as a team because the end of the universe just got real._

That had been the plan Problem Sleuth announced to his team in the emergency meeting. The major flaw in that plan, though, was that none of them kept their good records at the office, if they had any at all.

When asked if they had anything that was ‘close enough’, because Sleuth _did not_ want to spend his last hours stuck in traffic, Pickle Inspector quietly cleared his throat and with a nervous smile, shakily held up a record.

No one else in the room seemed to recognize it, so Sleuth had shrugged and told PI to give it a spin.

A little after a minute into the song, Sleuth was grimacing, and a quick exchange of glances proved that Dick was doing the same. But Nervous Broad was bobbing her head a little and Hysterical Dame looked like she was trying not to smile.

After the first playthrough, Dick shook his head.

“Geez, PI, that’s a little tasteless, don’t you think?”

Inspector immediately lost that happy look he’d been wearing through the song and looked as nervous and self conscious as ever. Dame quickly came to his rescue:

“How so? Guy’s gotta point,” she said.

Dick didn’t have a response, but that could have been because Dame was suddenly holding a bottle of Tequila.

An hour later (they thankfully played a few other tracks in the process) and Nervous Broad and Pickle Inspector were dancing, while Dame posed on the couch and sang along. Or tried to, but then Ace Dick broke out his truffle shuffle.

“Oh god watch where you aim that!” she giggled, but then, with her attention away from the record player, she noticed this meeting was missing its planner.

The window was open to the fire escape (oddly a feature Sleuth had been insistent on when they were hunting for office space), so it wasn’t a hard mystery to solve. Dame slid off the couch and grabbed the closest bottle of alcoholic something on her way out.

He wasn’t on the roof, just the next platform up.

“Hey,” Dame tried to think of a one-liner but gave up, “what’re you doin’ up there?”

“Counting the stars,” Sleuth said, and it was true; there were only a few hundred left, it looked like.

Dame contemplated the sky as well, but then she shook her head and climbed the stairs.

“You’re missing the party.”

“Has Ace Dick done the truffle shuffle yet?”

Dame coughed, “Yeah, did it when I left.”

Sleuth’s eye twitched.

“Good, I haven’t missed anything.”

Dame rolled her eyes, but leaned against rail at Sleuth’s side. She craned her neck, and leaned a little to get a look at his hand.

“What d’you got there?”

Sleuth handed her the flask, and she took a sip. Ah, whisky, of course. She nodded and handed it back.

“Ah, so I didn’t have to bring a present along, too bad.”

Smirking, she raised her own bottle. Sleuth appraised it and gave an approving nod.

“Candy Corn Liqueur, nice. Where’d you find it?”

“Your desk. I think Dick brought it.”

Sleuth looked surprised for a second, then scowled and rolled his eyes.

“I fucking _knew_ it! He stole that from me, what an ass! He doesn’t even like the stuff!”

Dame shrugged and took a sip of it. The flavour kind of clashed with the whisky’s aftertaste, but that would fix itself in time.

“S’ours now. Want some?”

Sleuth was looking at the flask in his hands. Or maybe over it and at the city. Whichever it was, he was quiet for a few moments.

“Nah, I think I’ll cut myself off after this.”

Dame smirked again, “What, afraid of a hangover?”

Sleuth shook his head, but at least he didn’t look so dark and broody when he took another swig from the flask. It came back soon after he started staring at the sky again, though.

Prodding him for answers wasn’t going to do anything, not when he was like this, so Dame just watched the sky with him. From below, the early notes of the _Masochism Tango_ drifted out of the office, as well as shouts from Ace Dick criticizing Inspector’s footwork and demands that he quit stepping on him. That they were still in earshot didn’t escape Dame, even though it would be hard to get out of range of those two.

“I wonder if I could have stopped this,” Sleuth murmured.

Dame huffed.

“And how exactly would you do that, wise guy?”

Sleuth shrugged.

“I shoulda kept better tabs on Slick, I guess. S’not like there are any bigger bad guys around, nothing like MK.”

He sighed.

“I should have known he’d pull something like this, especially after their raid on the Felt.”

Dame nodded slowly. Yeah. The raid that took out most of the Felt at the cost of most of the Crew. Losing everyone you cared about (or whatever approximated it for the murderous gang) would feel like the end of the world anyway.

“Maybe I could have intercepted him, or... Or finally brought him in. Or...”

“Or killed him?”

Sleuth exhaled deeply, and leaned heavier against the rail. His gaze was towards the city, but he probably wasn’t looking at it.

Dame couldn’t watch him like this for long. She sought inspiration from another sip of liqueur, and she wasn’t sure if she found it but she went ahead anyway. As much as they’d been drinking, there was still that weird sense of urgency that came with waiting for something.

“Maybe there are just some things you can’t stop,” she said lightly. After a moment, she found example and went ahead, “Like, I don’t know, you couldn’t stop a meteor if it was about to crash into the city, right?”

Sleuth tilted his head.

“I dunno, I think Sepulchritude-”

“Yeah but then you’d die, and who’d save us from the next meteor?”

Dame sighed.

“Okay, that’s a bad example, but whatever, my point is, yeah, you didn’t stop it, but maybe you couldn’t and... Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe it has to be this way.”

“That’s unusually fatalistic of you.”

Dame shrugged.

“It’s not like we don’t know what’s coming, either. I mean Inspector and Dick went through it before, and you kind of know Death, right?”

That was true, but this was different. This was _everything_ ending _permanently_ , and... And... Okay no, Dame really had a point. Even that song had a point - _everyone_ was going to die soon, but wherever they ended up they wouldn’t be alone or missing anyone. Sleuth kept pressing anyway, but really the best thing he could come up with was:

“But the material world is where I keep all my _stuff,”_ he moaned.

Dame suddenly burst out cackling.

“Well- well there’s probably more stuff in the afterlife. You can work on your stuff collection there.”

Sleuth snickered into his flask, and he and Dame went back to watching the sky. There were certainly less stars than when Dame had joined him. After a moment, Dame sighed.

“Y’know, I thought they were so far it took millions of years for the light to reach us,” she murmured.

“Maybe this really was inevitable,” Sleuth said heavily.

Dame looked at him, but he kept watching the stars wink out.

“This was set to happen ages ago and Slick’s just acting as a cog in the wheels of fate, and nothing he or I or anyone could do to stop it.”

Sleuth glanced at Dame, and she was back to gazing at the sky, though skeptically, for some reason.

“Naaah, that’s too depressing,” she said after a moment, shrugging, “I think it’s just some weird space shit letting us see it in real time. Or just weird space shit in general, you never know around Snowman and her gang.”

Sleuth raised his eyebrow.

“Dame, are you attempting to argue with me over how the world is ending?”

Dame thought about it, then giggled.

“I guess. Pretty dumb, huh? Whichever it is, it doesn’t matter, it’s happening anyway.”

There was a loud _clang_ down below - they looked down and watched Pickle Inspector pick himself up.

“Oh-oh dear,” he muttered, but when he looked up and saw them he was grinning.

“I’ve - ah - I’ve been watching the - uh - stars!” he said, stumbling and catching himself on the railing.

“Ah - and, uh, if we are at the center of the end of the universe - or just - from our perspective - the rate they’re going out means we have about five minutes.”

His smile shifted from confident back to his usual shakiness, “Er, yes, and I think that’s just enough for, ah, a last round?”

“A last call?” Dame said.

Pickle Inspector blinked.

“Oh! Yes, that too, that too, I suppose. Um... So... Just, letting you know!”

And with that, he made a lunge back for the window. Dame was smiling when she turned to Sleuth, and was happy that he was doing the same.

“Well, shall we?”

“I don’t know, it’s pretty quiet out here.”

He said that, despite the record and the shouting they could hear from the office, and the sirens and crashes and car horns and other parts of the cacophony a sudden disaster brought. Dame shrugged it off; she knew he didn’t mean it, anyway.

“Yeah but it’s warmer in there. And there’s more booze.”

“You have plenty of that left,” Sleuth said.

Dame shrugged again and started for the stairs.

“Yeah, but if I don’t get the taste of candy out of my mouth soon, I’m gonna puke.”

Sleuth was right behind her. He had to be to nudge her arm with the flask.

“Wanna trade?”

They re-entered the office equipped with each other’s liquor to the others doing a silly dance in the middle of the room.

“Oh, hey,” Dame said, and elbowed Sleuth lightly, “We got a deadline, we should count down! It’ll be like a fucked up new years party.”

Sleuth chuckled and shook his head.

“More like a no-new years party,” he said, and Dame entered another giggle fit.

 _Maybe_ this song could have worked as background music for the end of the world, if it was played on its own, background sounds muted, and laid over some ironically horrible or tragic imagery. Not, however, while five adults were singing and dancing to it with the kind of co-ordination only alcohol and natural silliness could fuel.

Pickle Inspector tried to step out of a twirl and lost his balance, but caught it just enough to look out the window and smile. He whirled back around and swerved back into the makeshift dance floor.

“H-hey, I - I think it’s only... Only twenty seconds to go!” Pickle Inspector stammered through his inebriated haze.

Nervous Broad was giggling, Pickle Inspector was supporting her, and possibly unknownst to them, Ace Dick was supporting Pickle Inspector.

Sleuth smirked.

“Hah, fucked up new years party,” he muttered.

“More like no-new years party,” Dame snickered.

Sleuth raised his glass, Dame raised her bottle.

They counted down. Dame delicately took Sleuth’s hand on _six_ , they shared a look on _four_ , and fondly regarded the room on _two_.

   


  


   


  


Dick and Inspector didn’t do dying any justice. Dick’s descriptions were, of course, flat and unimaginative, but Inspector made it a big flowery, artistically beautiful thing. Really, things went black, then white, his head stung a little, and then they were there. He supposed the only downside was that he was more or less sober now, but with the work Death did there surely had to be _some_ alcohol around here.

“Just sing out a te deum when you see the I-C-B-MMM and the party will be come as you _aaaaaare!”_ Pickle Inspector sang, loudly and a little off-key, until he realized that they were dead, for one, and for another that the afterlife was _really crowded._ He clammed up immediately and seemed to shrink behind Nervous Broad.

Dick might have made a brash comment about that, but he was grunting and elbowing some of the other dead people out of his personal space.

“Goddamn lousy afterlife,” he said with a scowl, “Wasn’t this crowded last time.”

“W-well a whole planet is here now,” Pickle Inspector murmured into Nervous Broad’s shoulder.

“Yeah, Death’s got a helluva work load tonight, that’s for sure,” Sleuth said, dipping his hands in his pockets and looking around.

It was _packed_ and there were people as far as he could see, and considering the infinity of this metaphysical space, that was a _lot._ Between legs and the occasional very small, very brief gap in the crowds, he could see tables set out, maybe in a vain attempt by Death to make the wait time less agonizing by turning the afterlife into a makeshift cafe, but the poor guy underestimated the toll or overestimated his capability. Sleuth hummed to himself.

“Surprised we haven’t seen him yet, though. We kind of know him, ri-”

It was suddenly very cold right behind him. Sleuth locked up, but he got over it quick enough and turned to Death.

“Ah, speak of the bony devil. How’s it going?”

Death looked as tired and haggard as a skeleton could. He was already swaying on his feet and by Sleuth’s estimate it hadn’t been five minutes since the end of the world. Death shook his head, but suddenly straightened and looked like he was full of energy and hope, which immediately set off alarms in Sleuth’s head. He glanced back at his team to see if they could pick it up too, or if he didn’t, then to warn them.

Death looked back around the room of the afterlife, sweeping his hand around in a clear indication that the overload was vast, and he could really use a hand sorting it all out.

In the seconds where Death wasn’t looking at them, Sleuth tapped Dame’s arm and dove into the crowd one way; Dick lifted people and tossed them behind him, clearing a path for himself and providing a potential distraction at the same time, and Dame caught Broad’s wrist and pulled her along another way through the crowd.

Pickle Inspector had been too busy thinking about the exact number of people standing around them (and in earshot!) to notice any of the commotion, and was still standing there when Death turned back around and presented a cheap, black t-shirt with a skull decal on the left breast and _STAFF_ printed across the back.

“O-oh, I see,” he mumbled, and took the t-shirt.

It would be rude to turn Death away when he had been such a good sport last time, after all.


End file.
